aping

this is the most fun tower defense game that i’ve ever played. once i started, i literally couldn’t stop until i finished the whole game.

now that i think about it, i don’t know if that means my life is sad or that the game is good. probably both. either way, i love it!

i decided to take a night off from video blogging and talking about my guilty pleasures to post my dockless desktop. i don’t know if i’ve reached new levels of being a pc user but i prefer the start menu over the dock. i like how it remembers your most used programs and then remembers your favorite or most used files in those programs. for example, it remembers which sites i visit most often in chrome or the last songs i played on itunes. i can select all these things directly from the start menu. it’s pretty cool. plus, i like the clean interface. it only take up a tiny corner of my desktop (this is completely nerdy, but i’m OCD about my desktop real estate, as you can probably tell from my screenshot) and it is my lifeblood to all my favorite sites, songs, and files! :)

I look humongous in this sweatshirt.

I’m totally late on this

but i really love this video. it is my favorite video from 2009. i love the song, art direction, choreography, costumes, and the creativity. it’s awesome.

i don’t usually blog about my personal life, but i am too ecstatic to keep this in.

wow, i have the best boyfriend ever! how do you follow up a trip to india? he got me not one but two pairs of uggs for valentine’s day (i know it’s not valentine’s day yet, but he’s not as good at keeping secrets as he is in totally spoiling me)! i seriously cannot believe it but i couldn’t be happier. there’s literally nothing i want more. the way to my heart is definitely through uggs! I am so lucky! :)

Ugg Australia Classic Cardy

Ugg Australia Gerty

Thank you Michael! I love you!

Since I’ve been back from India, I’ve been on my own strange sleep schedule. I blame India, and say “I’m on India time” when in fact, I am not. I wake up between 4-6 am every morning and i’m done (i mean DONE) by around 9 or 10 pm. i really hate this sleep schedule.

okay, that’s all i have to say.

(sorry this post is lame, but i am trying to post daily, even if it means my posts suck)

Programs used: Object Dock

I am blogging on the first day of my new semester. As of today, I will be more than 50% done with law school! (cheers) actually, i kind of like law school and i don’t really want to leave but i am supposed to hate it so keep this on the DL.

on a scale of 1-10, ten being very coherent and well thought out, this post is probably going to be somewhere around a 3.5. i am still suffering from jet lag and a little bit of the stomach flu. i had 4 hours of sleep. actually, that is misleading. i had a nightmare so it would be more accurate to say i have 4 hours of nightmares. doesn’t that sound so much worse? yeah, i dreamt i was on a road trip to vegas but it was more like a horror movie than a fun chick flick.

to be honest, i was in a sad mood when i started this blog entry, but through the miracle of blogging, i now feel better! (more cheers)

i wish my blog had a theme. like, “celebrity faux pas!” or “how to cook like martha, with rachel’s schedule, and look like giada while doing it all” (wow, i watch way too much food network), or sports from a girl’s perspective, or i review the latest gadgets, or makeup tips. anyway, the point is that my blog is pointless. i’ve been trying to pick a topic for my blog for about 6 years now and i can’t really do it. i never want to limit myself to any topic. i have always been a personal blogger and i guess i always will be.

and the thing i miss the most (beside my cat roxy) are RAMEN NOODLES!!!!

also love how all they talk about on espn and nfl network now are the chargers.

great things to come home to. :)

I tend to watch more movies this time of year and so far I feel like I’m 2 for 2 this holiday season.

The first movie I saw was James Cameron’s Avatar which I knew almost nothing about when I went to see the movie. I didn’t see on IMAX, only 3D. I thought the movie was pretty good. I would give it a B or a B+. There were some scenes that the movie could have done without. It definitely didn’t need to be 2 hours and 40 minutes. I thought that the video diaries were the biggest waste of time. Other than that, the cgi was pretty much everything you’d expect it to be. The movie was anti big corporation and pro-environment. even though i agree with the political message of the movie, i know that there are others who don’t see the world that way. i thought it was an interesting risk that the movie took.

my favorite part of this movie was the action scene at the end when everything comes together. I think that finale was worth sitting though some of the cheesier plot developments throughout.

another cool thing that is tangentially related to this movie were the previews of the other 3D movies that will be released. I guess hollywood has embraced making 3d movies (i apologize if i am late on this, i’ve been living under a rock for the past few months) so i was pleasantly surprised that the 3d glasses that i spend $3 on can be reused in the future.

The other movie that I saw recently is Up in the Air starring George Clooney. This is another movie i knew absolutely nothing about when i sat down to watch it in the theater (once again, i’ve been living under a rock the past few months). i now know that this is a remake.

Let me first say that I am the antithesis of a clooney fan: i find the smugness he brings to the characters i’ve seen him play unbearable and i avoid watching his movies as much as possible. however, i saw this movie with my friends because i owed them one and i heard it got good reviews.

i have to admit that i kind of love this movie. it’s not a romantic comedy, more like a drama. clooney was brillant in it and the rest of the cast was excellent. I would give this movie somewhere between a B+ and an A-. I don’t know if this movie is for everyone (b/c people like movies for different reasons) but i really liked it.

besides the stellar acting and directing, the writing was also superb. this was not the main point of the movie, but the part i like the best was how this movie wove generational differences between and within the sexes. i don’t know if this makes me a nerd but i really appreciated seeing modern women from different age groups interact with each other. it was done in a very intelligent, insightful way that both sexes would find entertaining and thought-provoking. since i recently turned 30, i was able to identify with both natalie (anna kendrick) and alex (vera farmiga).

natalie was a great representation of women who are recent college grads: she is hardworking, confident, smart, and idealistic about the world and love. at the same time, she is still so inexperienced and has a lot to learn. i like that you get to see some of her growing pains into full womanhood. it’s a process that every girl goes through but is not always talked about.

for her part, alex exhibits much of the grace, confidence, and wisdom found in many modern successful women. while she too is flawed (i won’t give it away), she portrays the modern woman not only in her career and work ethic, but also in her unabashed expression of her sexuality. for better or worse, she depicts the modern woman is not nearly as different from the modern man as we would like. probably the most telling thing she said about herself was when she said, “I’m just like you, except with a vagina.”

both these women challenge clooney’s character, ryan, who end up questioning the way he has lived his life and his previous life goals.

a final thing i like about this movie is the timeliness of the story. we live in a time when the economy sucks and this movie doesn’t shy away from the difficulties it has on people’s lives. it doesn’t take place in super wealthy neighborhoods or stars super wealthy characters. instead, most of the main characters are from nebraska and they fly to places like witchita, detroit, etc. these are places that are hit hardest when the chips fall. i appreciated the dance between realism and art in the storytelling.

okay, i lied. there is another final thing i like about this movie. i travel a lot and i like how so much of this movie takes place in airports. somehow, this makes airports and flying seem more bearable to me.

now i’m done.

I’ve been meaning to blog more lately since i have more free time and i’m on vacation.

well, today is christmas day. i am listening to christmas music and baking cupcakes to bring to my family gathering later tonight. i’ve always loved christmas. it’s not my favorite holiday because to me, christmas is bigger than a holiday: it’s a season. it’s music, food, family, and celebrating life. it’s like everyone’s birthday, thanksgiving, and valentine’s day wrapped up in one. now that i am an adult, i realize how lucky i was as a kid to have such happy christmas’s.

the reason why i am blogging is because i got a bunch of mass text messages wishing me merry christmas like i have for all of the big holidays. in the past, i have always more or less just thought, “that’s nice” and forgot about them. i’ve never sent them because i always have friends who are resentful of those mass texts. this year, while i was waiting for the cupcakes to bake, i decided i have nothing better to do and i sent a mass text. i sent it to 23 lucky recipients and felt really slimely the whole time. i guess it’s because it’s so effortless and impersonal. it was a nice surprise when people wrote back. on the whole, i don’t think i’ll send another mass text again. i feel like, if you’re gonna put forth that little effort, don’t even bother. haha.

so my cupcakes turned out very medicore. i suck at baking. baking is like creating art with food and i am not good at manipulating food in a way to make it delicious and beautiful. i am too impatient, uncoordinated, and lazy. they were okay until i had to decorate them. that was supposed to be the fun part, but it just ended up being the disappointing part for me. they turned out fine, i was just hoping they’d look better.

i feel like i don’t understand the internet anymore. when i first started my website, there was no such thing as a “blog”, only home pages and they were all made by people who knew html as well as they knew english. slowly that changed and more and more people had blogs. this is all fine and good. i mean, i always wanted to live in a world where everyone had a blog.

or so i thought.

the reason why i am talking about all this is because i tried reading another law student’s blog. i found it not only immediately unsatisfying but unbearable. i finally figured out why i hate reading other law students’ blogs: i find their smug and self-congratulatory attitude unbearable. objectively, she is good writer and more interesting blogger than i am, but i can’t deal with her ‘tude.

so went on facebook after that. everyone was updating their statuses about how they are done with finals, etc… this is something i don’t get. what i mean is, when i am done with finals, my first thought is not to log on to facebook and update my status about being done. i just want to be far away from computers, actually. well, whatever. facebook has been less and less appealing.

I don’t know how to say goodbye to my old pet, my old friend. it’s hard to believe that just 24 hours ago she was alive. now i feel like an eternity separates today and yesterday. i thought i prepared myself for her passing, but now i realize that nothing can prepare me for this. how do you do it? how do you grieve losing someone who meant the world to you? lose them forever in an instant? now, i’m in my apartment and everywhere i look, i see her. i see the memories we’ve made. she was there when i moved into this apartment, and now i’m going to have to move out without her. she was there when i moved to baltimore. she was there through everything. when i lost boyfriends, jobs, changed careers, everything. when i felt like the world turned its back on me, her faithfulness and love was steadfast and sustaining. she was always there. a reliable friend whose beauty was captivating and love was comforting. i remember the day i adopted her from the pound. i remember the first time i saw her, and the first time i picked her up. and i remember how she looked last night, when i had to say goodbye. it was our last moment that we would ever share. now i’m left with memories that break my heart because they make me long for someone who has moved on. even still, i hold on to them tighter than ever because that’s all i have left of her and i cherish them with all my heart. coco was not just a cat. coco was one of the greatest treasures in my life. it has been a privilege to be her owner. my heart will always belong to her. coco, i love you and i miss you.

i’ve been playing sid meier’s games since 1998 and civilization is consistently one of the best strategy turn-by-turn games on the market. even though civ 4 came out several years ago, its incompatibility with my intel mac has made it inaccessible for me to play. however, now that i am pc, i now have access to civ 4. here are some of my quick thoughts on the game.

• no throne room – i miss the throne room from civ 2 and civ 3. this is my biggest complaint. i never though i’d miss it as much as i do.
• wonder movies suck. they suck as bad as the ones from civ 3. the civ 2 wonder movies were my favorite. also, i feel like the wonders aren’t as useful as they were in civ 3 and especially in civ 2, except that they allow for great people (see below).
• no foreign adviser window when you are negotiating with other nations. it makes negotiating much harder. i don’t really do it much at all anymore.
• cultural victories are much harder. also, it is harder to capture bordering cities with high culture ratings. ALSO, other civilizations will start a war with you even if you capture one of their border cities with your culture.
• addition of great people. this is very cool. it is harder to start a golden age, and i feel like golden ages aren’t as lucrative in this game. plus, it doesn’t notify you when the golden age ends.
• addition of religion. this is cool b/c it is another way to keep your people happy and gives you more buildings you can build in your city to increase your culture rating.
• no more city snapshots – this is when you can “view city” when you are in a city’s screen.
• shorter games. i think i like this. it allows the player to feel like she can experiment with different strategy types without committing seven plus hours of gameplay, even when the strategy fails.
• units will actually respond to your commands in their language (i.e., if you are Spain, your units will respond in Spanish). very cool.
• after you build the united nations, you are usually elected the united nations secretary general unless you civ really sucks. this is a fucken waste of time. diplomatic victories are nearly impossible. you have to give up a lot more than you did before.
• OVERALL: Bad: i feel like the look and feel of the game from a graphical standpoint is very disappointing. they took out some of the best elements of the game graphically. also, i don’t have any of the many expansion packs which may include the throne room or city views. i haven’t looked into that yet. I believe there are more expansion packs for this version of civ than any of the others. this is kind of annoying, because like in the sims 3, the gamer has to pay more money to get the complete game. buying the original game itself gives you the bare bones for game-play experience. Good: however, it is cool that they added elements like religion and great people. this game is more challenging to win in every way, except the space race, which i feel is easier to win.

this video is long and you do need need to watch it in order to understand my post. however, watching this video will certainly prove my point faster.

carrie prejean complains about her “palin-ization”, which is the alleged undue media critism that conservative christian woman suffer while liberal women like sotomayer and clinton are immune to. the fact that she expected to be treated with as much respect as sotomayer and clinton is more outrageous to me than her claim that they do not suffer media criticism. but i digress. carrie, maybe america hates you because you’re a hypocrite who makes masturbation videos and still has the nerve to sit on her high horse and proudly declare that gays should not have the right to be married, and not because you are a good ol’ christian girl with old-fashioned values.

i was once christian and have spent almost ten years studying the bible. the bible is silent on the issue of the rights society grants to people with various lifestyles. my point is that the bible does not prohibit granting gays the right to marriage. prejean is wrong to assume that just because the bible condemns homosexuality, it also condemns giving gays equal rights under the law. also, the last i checked, it wasn’t considered godly to make masterbation videos (or even masterbate for that matter). i am embarrassed for christianity that this airhead is going around parading her “victimization” under the banner of christianity.

carrie, people don’t hate you because of your beliefs; they hate you because you are a stupid bitch and it deeply offends society that someone so full of contradictions, yet so smug, is part of the human race and somehow connected to all of us. thanks to prejean and her hero palin, christianity has become synomous with ignorance, bigotry, racism, intolerance, and a disgusting level of self-righteous and hypocrisy rivaled only by the Pharisees.

if she sought my advice as legal counsel, i would have suggested that instead of suing the pageant, she should have sued the dentist who put in her giant fake veneers.

I usually sleep with a sleep mask and I am really good at losing them. I’ve lost all of them since I’ve moved to Baltimore so tonight I decided it is time to buy a new one. Now that Daylight Savings is over the sun comes up earlier and earlier, which is cramping my style. I usually don’t notice it on the weekdays, but this makes it impossible for me to sleep in on the weekends. I decided that getting a good night’s sleep is important enough for me to make this purchase even though I am pretty broke right now.

I am a typical girl so i like pretty things. Even practical every day things like sleep masks should be pretty if possible. Mary Green makes a bunch of really pretty sleep masks so i decided to buy one of hers. I’ve had literally every single type of sleep mask that is on the market and I like variety so I prefer to try new things all the time. I got the Cloud Nine sleep mask that you see pictured above which i think is the prettiest! I can’t wait to get it and use it!

in an effort to balance the doom and gloom that has been the common theme in all my recent posts and in another effort to blog more often, today’s post is about something that brings me great happiness: potbelly’s!

me: how did you get a free potbelly lunch?
friend: that healthcare policy debate that was held during the noon lunch period
me: [expletive]
i missed it
friend: ya unlike most free lunch events, there plenty to go around
me: [more expletives]
i’m addicted to potbelly’s
you don’t understand
friend: lol
why’s that?
me: it tastes good
friend: haha